Helen Patrice

Helen Patrice was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1964, and has lived her whole life there. She did the usual primary and high school thing, and self-educated in science, science fiction, fantasy, weird fiction, and the occult through a steady diet of books, television, and a secondhand bookshop in Bentleigh that stocked a lot of strange paperbacks.

Star Trek fan fiction was her entry, age 15, into fandom, and she spent many happy years writing the further adventures of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura.

She began her professional writing career age 17.

She did a Bachelor of Arts through Victoria College.

Her fiction is heavily influenced by Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, and her personal spirituality as an eclectic solitary pagan.

Her poetry is inspired by Marge Piercy, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, and Carol Ann Duffy.

Helen is a mother of two, grandmother of three, wife, carer, disability advocate, and is owned by four cats, and one small yappy dog.

Helen has worked as a professional belly dance teacher, tarot consultant, cheiromancer, seller of crystals, leaf polisher for the Australian Public Service, clerk, yoga and meditation instructor, and Easter egg wrapper.

She volunteers irregularly as a mentor and advisor to parents of young people with autism and/or intellectual impairment.

She now lives in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, with a hazy view of the Dandenongs, and has a chatty relationship with a large flock of cockatoos in the local dog park.